The Self-Motivation Battle #1

Hello everyone and welcome to our place! 😀

How is everyone doing? Motivated to start/continue the day? Ready to conquer the World, do everything you need to do in your To-Do list and still be able to get some alone time? If yes, great! If not, well… Welcome to my world then!

Motivation is something that I’m pretty sure that many people out there are better to speak of than myself. Nevertheless, from what I’ve watched, read and so on, there is something that always falls flat. The people who normally talk about this type of subject seem to already have their life together. Which is perfect if you are trying to sell a book. But, saying that you felt like this and like that is different from reading some thoughts by someone who is, in fact, struggling about it at the moment. That’s why I’m here! Yaiiiii (not).

In a perfect world, I think motivation would be like an Anime. I mean, there would always be people there shouting your name and saying “You can do it”, “Gambatte”, and so on. However, that’s not what we get in the real world.

In fact, especially when you become an adult, most of the times this motivation will have to come from within and I’m not only referring to blogging, I’m actually talking about real life. It can be a something at your work that you just can’t find the motivation to do it, trying to get a job and receiving nos all the time, doing house chores although everything is going to get dirty in a week or so, and the list continues.

In the real world, we do not have always people around us shouting our name and saying you can do it! In fact, I think there was not even a time that someone told me “You can do it” when I was trying to find the motivation to iron my clothes… In fact, it would be strange if that happened. Moreover, I think even if I had a personal shouter saying “You Can Do it” all the time would really make a difference. To be honest, those kinds of words do not really make more motivated or confident.

Long story short, I had to find some ways to help me keep motivated (and productive) throughout the day even if I wake up and just feel I want to sleep for 2 weeks straight. If I didn’t do this you can be sure that I would just not be able to work full-time, blog, going to the gym and still stream every single weekday (and let’s not forget all those house chores that an adult has to do, thank god I’m the one cooking at home!).

So, here am I, again, trying to help you with something I suffer from. Now, I’ve already done some kind of Blog Motivation kind of stuff. Blogging is hard and how I measure my posts success are some good ones where I explain how I cope with seeing slow growth, not much engagement, and so on and still feel motivated. This way, this one will be a little broader! I actually have to self-motivate me a lot, guys xD

Just a last note. In the middle of the post, after 1000 words were written I decided this will be better to be a series and not just one post! So, today I want to give you the power of:

– Self-Talk –

I’ve talked about this one before, more regarding Blogging than the overall life. But the fact is, I do this many, many times throughout the day! In fact, every time I need to do something and I don’t feel like it I do this. In fact, I did it today morning when I woke up. This is how it went:

Arthifis wakes up, looks at the phone and it’s time to get up. Sits down on the edge of the bed and his first thoughts were “Damn it! I can’t believe I have to go work at that company again! I’m sick of all of it! I really need to get a new job”. In fact, I’m already looking and sending CVs as we speak. However, until I’m able to grab my next adventure I will need to continue to do a good job where I’m working right now.

So, I started talking to myself:

“Ok, Arthifis! This is what you are going to do! You are going to stop lamenting, get up and when you get to work you will just go full speed, with NO distractions and finish almost everything you have to do today by the morning. Afterwards, you can go and write on the blog for a bit”

I’m not even kidding, I got up and I was a man with a mission. It’s now the beginning of the afternoon and guess what, I’m writing this post with all my to-do list for the day almost done.

The trick behind this is that you need to be objective and give yourself an order (We do work better when someone gives us orders). When I started doing this the only way it resulted was by using a mirror and talk out loud to myself in the bathroom. Nowadays I’m able to do it with thought. Nevertheless, there are still times where I’m not able to do it and I need to go and find a quiet room so I can order myself around out loud without anyone hearing me… I mean, that would be a little strange right?

The conversation you have to yourself should go with these steps:

• Have a starting time to do what you have to do – Example: The time I finish this talk I will do this…
• Give yourself clear and possible objectives – Example: The time I finish this talk I will go and iron my clothes, write 5 pages for my novel, read 3 blog posts, and so on. Don’t go with – After I finish this talk I’m going to write a full novel in a day and conquer the world!
• Give yourself a treat by the end of it – Example: The time I finish this talk I will go and iron my clothes, write 5 pages for my novel, read 3 blog posts, and so on. When I finish it I can go and eat some chocolate while watching that episode I’ve been dying to watch.

That’s how I do it. Think that you are giving a job task to yourself. What kind of job tasks would you actually take on and feel motivated to do? Some that you can, in fact, accomplish it and that you will get some kind of reward. No one works for free (and I’m not talking only about money here)…

Let’s then get my morning routine today as an example again:

• Have a starting time to do what you have to do – “You are going to stop lamenting, get up”
• Give yourself clear and possible objectives –“get up and when you get to work you will just go full speed, with NO distractions and finish almost everything you have to do today by the morning”
• Give yourself a treat by the end of it – “Afterwards, you can go and write on the blog for a bit”

As you can see I added all the elements and it worked! Of course, this took some time, it’s not the first time you do it will have 100% of the effect. But, with time you will see major differences 😛 You go from “Naaah I don’t want to!” to “Let’s do it!”.

That’s the first thing I wanted to share with you guys! I hope it helps you! Tell me what do you do to self-motivate yourself in the comments! 😀 I’ll be adding other tips in the following weeks! So stay tuned for that 😉

(Second round for the self-motivation battle here!)